Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Last week we took a little trek downtown to our state capitol grounds because NASA was in town again. They had numerous stations set up with activities for kids that taught them a bit about space, space travel, and the research NASA does in space.

One of the first stations we stopped at was the pump rocket display. The kids were allowed to launch these pump rockets, all the while being taught about shuttle launches.

At one point, the man from NASA began explaining the speed at which the shuttle has to reach in order to catch up to the space station, which is 17,500mph. At that point, Finn raised his hand. When called upon, Finn asked, “Would that be about…this fast,” and he took off running as fast as he could around the grounds. We all stood there and waited and watched as he made his loop. When he returned, the man, smiling said, “[The shuttle’s] fast, but I don’t know if it’s that fast.” Then Finn walked off, with just a little more bounce to his step.

Gotta love that kid!

The rest of our time was spent playing with robots:

Racing balloons:

Admiring the shuttle:

Trying on astronaut helmets:

Mingling with astronauts, some of which were very large:

Performing very important space tasks:

Dressing a potato in space suits [i.e. foil, wax paper, newspaper, and index cards] with Orion[ that was his name…honest]: